Even on her way to the customary inauguration of the Parliament at the beginning of a year, she smuggles an Anita Brookner to keep her occupied on her short journey, much to the chagrin of her tetchy husband. Going through Proust, Balzac, Turgenev, Trollope and Hardy like a knife scything through butter, the Queen becomes indifferent and lethargic to all her other royal duties. He soon does a capital job of his designated duty when Her Majesty makes rampant inroads into the world of literature. His sole chore is to recommend books which may be to her Majesty’s liking. Very soon, Norman is relieved of his kitchen duties and is promoted to the rank of a page. Slogging through Compton Burnett, the Queen borrows a Nancy Mitford book the next week. This unplanned event sets into motion an extraordinary chain of events. Hutchings and his young patron, the Queen borrows at random a book written by Ivy Compton Burnett (an author who was made Dame by the Queen herself). Hutchings the person in charge of the library is engaged in the process of stamping a book which is being borrowed by Norman Seakins, a ginger haired autodidact gay, who also happens to man the kitchens. This spontaneously acquired habit also launches Her Majesty into a threnody dissecting the very purpose of life.Ĭhasing after her unruly Corgis, the Queen, to her astonishment stumbles upon a mobile library parked adjacent the Buck House Kitchens.

One part refreshing and two parts humorous, “ The Uncommon Reader” has at its frontispiece a septuagenarian Queen Elizabeth suddenly bitten by the reading bug and transforming into a voracious and incorrigible reader. For this is a book, which I fervently and jealously wish I had written. If Alan Bennett had written “ The Uncommon Reader”, a couple of centuries ago, his head would have been served on a platter – literally.

The uncommon reader review